


Morning After

by scarletkestrel



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol, Ambiguity, Attempt at Humor, Flashbacks, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Keith (Voltron), To Be Continued, space alcohol, the others get there eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-09 11:44:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13480797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletkestrel/pseuds/scarletkestrel
Summary: “This is… not my bed,” Lance managed, staring up at the ceiling.“You think?” Keith grumbled irritably. Lance struggled up onto his elbows, trying to maintain some dignity and Keith almost snorted.“Alright, so what are you doing in my…” Lance paused to really look at their surroundings for the first time. “Supply closet,” he finished lamely.When Keith and Lance wake up trapped in a supply closet with no memory of the night before, both are forced to try and piece together what happened from the morning after.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there all! Please enjoy! This is my first fic on here so I hope you like it. More chapters to come soon. Sorry this one is short, but there will be more. Just Keith and Lance for now, but the others will have their moments to shine and be snarky soon enough. Chapters will alternate from current timeline to flashback.

Keith opened his eyes and immediately regretted it. His head was pounding and he was dizzy before he even moved. He closed his eyes again and dug through his memory for an explanation. Last night was just a long blur with only a few solid sensations to hold on to. Music, laughter, and something hot and sharp going down his throat - alcohol. Well that explained a lot. 

He rolled onto his back with a groan, pain shooting through his knuckles when he miscalculated the distance between himself an the wall and slammed his hand against the metal. Something was off. He’d been sleeping in the same room for months and he’d never accidentally hit the wall before. 

His foggy brain grasped blindly for what was wrong. His bed was harder than he remembered. Very hard. Too hard to be a bed at all. He was lying on a cold metal floor. 

He slitted his eyes open. It was too dark to see much of anything, but he could make out vague shapes. Enough to see the walls crowding too close together over his head, the indistinct lines of shelving latticing the perimeter, and a single unadorned Altean crystal giving off just a hint of light. He was in a storage closet. 

Lance. The name jumped to the front of his mind laced with irritation. Only he would think leaving Keith asleep in a storage closet was hilarious. He was probably waiting outside the door with a ‘coming out of the closet’ joke all prepared. 

“God Dammit, Lance,” Kieth grumbled aloud, trying to find the motivation to drag himself off the floor and face the humiliation that was surely to come. 

“Ugh, Keith.” Keith froze. That was not his voice. And yet it was definitely coming from inside his closet. And that voice…

The shape stretched out on the floor next to him shifted, drawing his attention for the first time. He hadn’t even realized he wasn’t alone in the dark space. But there was no mistaking who that voice belonged to, even if he couldn’t make out the specifics of the features in the dim lighting. 

Lance was taking up the remaining space on the cramped metal floor. Keith held his breath, waiting to see if Lance was awake. As far as Keith could tell he was just shifting around in his sleep. Good. The longer Lance slept, the better for Keith. 

Lance groaned again, rolling towards the sound of Keith’s voice. Keith, headache forgotten under the more imminent threat, pressed himself into the wall, back flush with the cold metal, trying to escape Lance’s reach. But there was nowhere to go in the small room. 

Lance’s arm landed across Keith’s stomach, his fingers ghosting over his ribs. His nose was turned into Keith’s shoulder, trapping Keith quite thoroughly against the wall. Keith squirmed, trying to escape. 

He had no idea how he was supposed to explain this to Lance when he woke up. He couldn’t even explain this to himself. 

He’d been so sure that Lance had been the perpetrator behind his closet incarceration. He had no idea what to think now that they had both been left here. 

Lance threw his arm around Keith, his fingers tucking possessively around his ribs and Keith froze. Every breath he took moved Lance’s arm up and down. Keith didn’t even want to think about what Lance would say if he woke up, nothing good certainly. 

But there just wasn’t anywhere for him to go. Half propped up on his arm with the wall to his left and Lance pushing in on his right he was well and truly trapped.

Maybe he could convince Lance to roll back the way he’d come. “Lance, Lance!” Keith whispered, his voice hoarse. He nudged Lance’s shoulders. His hope was that Lance would recognize his “rival’s” voice subconsciously and, with an added nudge from Keith, move to get away from it.

The effect was… rather the opposite. Lance moved closer, nuzzling into Keith’s shoulder. Which made Keith suddenly aware of the fact that he’d lost his jacket along the way and was now in just his black T-shirt.

Lance’s body was curled around Keith’s bare arm. Lance’s nose pressed into the cotton sleeve of Keith’s T-shirt and was accompanied by a murmured, “Mmmm… Keith.” 

Keith let out an embarrassing yelp as Lance’s fingers curled, pressing into the sensitive skin of his side. Alright, enough was enough. At this point, an awake Lance couldn’t possibly be worse than the sleeping one. 

Keith tried to free his arm to shake Lance’s shoulders, but the effort was futile and he was forced to settle for fidgeting uncomfortably underneath him. “Lance!” He raised his voice slightly, still unwilling to shout over such a close distance, but now officially trying to wake the lump next to him.

“You idiot, I am not your pillow! Wake up!” Lance slowly blinked himself awake. 

“Keith, go back to sleep,” he whined tiredly. Keith could see the exact moment that Lance realized what he had just said. 

“Keith!” Lance shrieked, pushing himself off the floor to look at Keith with wide eyes, “what are you doing in my bed?”

Keith just leveled a glare at him, too impatient to fight with a barely awake Lance and still trapped under Lance’s arm. Lance seemed to suddenly realize this second fact. With a yelp, he pulled his hand back from Keith’s body like he’d been burned, overcorrecting and crashing to the metal floor. 

“This is… not my bed,” Lance managed, staring up at the ceiling.

“You think?” Keith grumbled irritably. Lance struggled up onto his elbows, trying to maintain some dignity and Keith almost snorted. 

“Alright, so what are you doing in my…” Lance paused to really look at their surroundings for the first time. “Supply closet,” he finished lamely.

Keith was all geared up to argue, why was it suddenly Lance’s supply closet, and it wasn’t like he wanted to be here. Before he could get out so much as a “hold up”, Lance cut him off with a gasp. 

Lance was staring at him with a dropped jaw, shock clear on his face. There seemed to be a growing horror slipping in as well. Against his will, Keith was concerned. It took a lot to shut Lance up and right now he looked like he’d just had a stroke. 

“Lance, you okay?” Keith asked cautiously, crawling over to put his hand (huh, he’d lost his gloves too) on Lance’s forehead to check for… 

Shit, what was he even checking for? Some sign of Lance’s impending mental breakdown or aneurism. He really hoped that Lance wasn’t about to have an aneurism, Shiro would kill him if Lance died on his watch.

At the contact, Lance choked on another yelp and backpedaled as hard as he could, which only got him about a foot before his back hit the wall. Their closet was not a spacious one. 

“What is your problem?” Keith demanded. His eyes were finally adjusting to the dim light so when Lance broke out in a fierce blush, Keith could see the red in his dark cheeks. 

“You…uh,” Lance stumbled, “Do you think we… slept together? I mean, we clearly slept together, but you don’t think we… um… y’know. Sex?” 

It was the most fumbling, awkward sentence Keith had ever heard Lance say and by the time he was done, Keith was sure his cheeks were as red as Lance’s. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t even think about forming words. Lance and him having sex? The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. 

Okay, that was a lie. Of course it had occurred to him when he’d woken up in a closet with another guy after a night of heavy drinking. But he hadn’t entertained the idea for more than a single seconds because it was ridiculous. 

He and Lance? Yeah, right. It was clearly a prank. He’d really hoped that Lance would come to the same conclusion on his own and they could avoid this whole awkward conversation. Only Lance could so succinctly say everything Keith didn’t want him too. He changed his mind, he preferred Lance asleep.

Keith realized suddenly that he hadn’t responded to Lance and was probably just gaping at him in frozen, horrified silence. He coughed, trying to restart his malfunctioning brain. 

“That’s ridiculous,” he managed in a huff, voice scratchy like he hadn’t used it in years. He continued, trying for casual, like he woke up in closets with irritating bastards all the time. “I mean, of course not. Why would we…” He couldn’t get the words out so he gestured vaguely between them. “Anyway, it was probably a prank. Pidge is probably laughing her ass off somewhere right now.”

Lance managed a tense smile that passed as an agreement, but Keith could tell he wasn’t convinced. “So, uhh.” Lance was also trying for casual and, like Keith, falling a little short. “You remember what happened last night?” 

Unhappily, Keith shook his head. “You?” 

“Not really,” Lance admitted. 

An awkward silence stretched between them, filling up the limited space of their closet. Just as Keith was considering either running himself into the wall or punching out Lance just to break the uncomfortable stalemate, Lance beat him to it. 

He stretched his arms up over his head, lengthening the already lean line of his body. His joints popped audibly and Lance sighed. “Alright, well it’s been fun probably not sleeping with you, but I think it’s about time I blow this popsicle stand” Lance said with a cheeky wink that made Keith bristle. Apparently, Lance was officially awake enough to stop being awkward and just be irritating. Keith didn’t know if he was happy about that or not.

And Lance reached for the door. Oh my god, duh! The door! Keith was the biggest moron to ever fly around the universe. Of course there was a door. All rooms had doors. He should’ve been out of there the moment he opened his eyes and realized he wasn’t in his bed. Maybe he was more hungover than he thought. 

Lance gave a sharp tug on the handle. Nothing happened. He tugged harder. Nothing happened other than a dull chink of the thrown latch hitting the inside of the doorjamb. Lance turned to Keith and the surprise on his face would have been comical if the situation weren’t so messed up. 

Unable to resist, Keith stepped forward to try the door himself. Maybe it was just… stuck. He pulled with all of his not inconsiderable strength, but absolutely nothing happened except for the faint noise of protest from the door that Lance had already elicited. 

Locked. Of course it was locked. This was not Keith’s day.

Lance frowned at him, “I literally just tried the door. It was obviously locked.”

“I just wanted to try. You never know. Maybe it was just caught on something.”

“Because you’re so much stronger than me and you could obviously have gotten it open when I couldn’t?”

Keith bit back the “yes” that was on the tip of his tongue. “I’m sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities, I just tried the door.”

“Well thank the lord! Keith and all of his monstrous strength are here to save us from seemingly locked, but actually just very stuck doors everywhere.”

“Shut up! Maybe you just weren’t trying hard enough.”

“Why, because I like being stuck in closets with you?”

“You certainly seemed to like it ten minutes ago when you were asleep!”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Keith regretted them. First of all it was definitely crossing the line of “things they were allowed to make fun of each other for”, a line they were very careful about in all of their many fights. Lance may irritate Keith, but they were still teammates and he didn’t hate the guy. 

Second, it opened a door on some very awkward things that they’d been doing a really nice job of ignoring until right then. Things like why they woke up curled up together in a closet and what had happened last night while they were drunk that they didn’t remember.

Now they were said and there was no way to take them back. Keith wanted to apologize, but didn’t even know how to go about putting the words together. He and Lance never apologized to each other. 

“I was drunk! You can’t hold that against me! I probably mistook you for a girl with your long hair,” Lance shot back.

There was no way Lance had still been drunk in the morning and it was unclear whether he was defending the snuggling in the morning or the unknown events of last night. 

Whatever it was, Keith was wholeheartedly willing to accept his weak argument and move on. He even let the slight against his hair go. Anything to pretend he’d never mentioned how they woke up. Anything to get back to their normal petty bickering.

However, because he wasn’t fighting Lance’s claims, Keith had nothing to say. The fight petered off into an awkward silence. 

Lance cleared his throat, “Look, let’s just figure out a way to get out of here.” 

Hell must be freezing over if Lance was being the sensible one. Keith needed to pull it together. He could sort things out in his own head later, when he was back in his own room by himself. He stuffed his emotions in a box and pulled out his inner strategist. He needed to get them out of this closet. Looking around, his brain finally started working.

“There’s an air vent up there we can probably reach if I give you a boost. I think that’s our best way out,” he managed a terse smile, “Besides, we gotta kick Pidge’s ass for locking us in here.”

Lance laughed, loud and genuine. It was the first thing that’d happened that wasn’t accusatory or awkward. Keith’s tight smile relaxed into a slightly more real one. 

Lance slapped Keith on the shoulder, “Sounds like a plan. Alright muscles, get me up there.”

The moment Lance’s hand hit Keith’s shoulder, a memory came back to him. It was fuzzy and indistinct, but definitely a memory.

Hands on his sides, beneath his jacket. Their warm pressure sliding up to his shoulder, pushing the heavy leather off of him. The jacket pooling on the ground behind him, forgotten. A face, so close that he could feel the hot puffs of breath on his lips. Somebody speaking softly, he didn’t recognize the words, it sounded like Spanish. 

The face in front of him swam into focus. Soft tan skin and wide brown eyes. Lance. In the memory, Lance finished murmuring in Spanish and smiled softly. He looked… fond. 

Keith came back to himself in a sudden jerk as the memory cut off. It was hazy, but the sensations had been vivid. Keith could still feel the heat of Lance’s hands ghosting up his sides.

Lance had turned away, completely oblivious to what his casual touch had done to Keith. He stood contemplating the air vent they were going to use for their escape. He obviously did not have any sort of memory like the one that had just hit Keith over the back of the head. 

He told himself that it changed nothing. That his theory about Pidge locking them in here for her own devilish amusement was still the only plausible possibility. But as he remembered again that small, fond smile on Lance’s face, he found it harder and harder to believe. 

Shit.


	2. Chapter 2

The night before:

Keith tried to get his face to release from a tense frown as he stalked down the hallway. He was going to get another tension headache if he couldn't get some of the lines on his face to go away. He stopped and took a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds before releasing. He tried to find his center, that calm place in the middle of his chest where he could find peace and patience, but it seemed to be missing. It was possible he'd left it back there on the floor in the common room. 

He'd had a knock down drag out with Lance. Again. He couldn't stand that guy for the life of him. He was reckless and arrogant on missions, leaving it up to the rest of the team (read: Keith) to show up and pull his fat out of the fire when he got himself in too deep. Around the castle he was loud, lazy, and whiny. He set Keith's teeth on edge just by being in the same room at the same time. 

Keith didn't even remember what they'd been fighting about and it had only been minutes ago. He just remembered the anger and the screaming and finally, the storming off before he did something stupid and regrettable. 

Eventually, Keith's hallway reached a fork and he had to stop and assess the fact that he had no idea where he was going right now. He needed a destination. He couldn't go back to the common room and Lance, the lions would require him to pass through the common room, and his room seemed stark and lonely, a depressing place to be in the middle of the day. Not to mention it was on the other side of the castle.

Pidge. That was a good place to go. Her "workshop" as she had termed it, was only a couple of turns from here and he knew she'd be there. Pidge and Keith had developed a solid friendship based on quick sarcasm and an understanding of comfortable silence. She would let him sit with her and understand if he didn't say anything. 

He took the right passageway and a couple of hallways later he found himself entering the bunker-like doors to Pidge's workshop. Pidge was most of the way inside the engine of a hover ship, only her legs hanging out. She was folded over the rim, metal digging into her stomach, hands working deep in the bowels of the engine, and legs cycling in the air as if trying to find purchase. She heard his footsteps and a grease stained hand appeared out of the mess, a wave of acknowledgment and a promise to be out soon.

He wasn't in a hurry. He rearranged some of the lower crates in a large stack until he was seated comfortably, leaning back against solid metal with his feet thrown up on a smaller crate in front of him. 

He waited in silence, eyes closed. He'd talk when Pidge was out and could hear him. For now, he just smiled at the sounds of banging around, interspersed with cursing when she dropped a tool or couldn't reach what she wanted. 

A few minutes later, she finally surfaced. Her cheeks were pink from the stale, hot air inside the ship's workings and her hands were so covered in grease and oil that it looked like she was wearing black gloves. She smiled at him though and, after grabbing a cloth from a table to wipe her hands with, came over to plop down across from him, sitting cross legged on one of the smaller crates.

"Hey Keith, full attention or no?" She asked as way of greeting. He smiled, "Nah. You do what you want, I'm just here to decompress." This was a system they'd worked out a long time ago. Pidge was incredibly smart and was always tinkering with some small device. She was easily clever enough to do both that and hold up her end of a conversation, but some days, especially when you were talking about something important or personal, you just wanted the person you were talking to to look you in the eye. 

So after a large fight, wherein he accused her of never really listening and she accused him of never having complained before, they had developed this system. Right at the beginning of the conversation, Pidge would ask whether he wanted or needed her full attention. Most of the time he didn't and he let her tinker. On the occasions he really did want her to listen all the way, he would speak up and she would politely put her things away. It worked for them.

Today though, he didn't mind if she messed around with the tech he could already see her hands twitching towards. He didn't have much talking to do anyway. He didn't much want to rant about Lance. Again. There was nothing he could say that Pidge hadn't already heard from him. 

She nodded, taking out a complicated mass of wires and circuitry from her pocket. She started messing about with a thin screwdriver like instrument that glowed blue on the end when it touched the circuit board. She chattered occasionally about the work she was doing, both on her little pet projects and the improvements she was adding to the hover ships. There was a modicum of cursing to the whole thing, Pidge was in geek heaven in the castle, but messing around with tech you've never seen before with tools you've never used before was bound to go badly at times.

For a while they just sat in silence. Pidge tinkering and Keith relaxing, just taking in deep breaths of the calm, cool air of the hanger. He was just starting to drift off into a easy sleep when Pidge interrupted, waking him all the way up with a single sentence. 

"So... You and Lance had another lover's spat?" Pidge asked conversationally. Keith's eyes snapped open, pinning Pidge with a glare. "We what?!” He asked incredulously. 

"Because, y'know, you got that whole _thing_ going on." She gestured vaguely with her hand. The emphasis on "thing" was clear, like it was supposed to mean something to him. As it was, he just gaped at her. He tried to speak and end up choking on it. Finally he pushed the words out of his mouth.

"What thing? The thing where we hate each other? Where he gets under my skin any chance he gets? That's the only thing. There is no “ _thing_ ”. What would you know, anyway?" He only just managed to cut off what was surely going to be another long winded anti-Lance rant. He felt ridiculous using finger quotes when he said "thing", but he didn't know how to differentiate between the thing he and Lance had where they hate each other and the _"thing"_ that Pidge seemed to be under some delusion about them having.

Pidge just raised an eyebrow at him and Keith crossed his arm stubbornly. He felt like a pouting child as he stared her down, but was vindicated when she broke first. She looked away, throwing her hands up. "Fine, _fine_! There is no _thing_. I'm just a crazy tech geek, what do I know? Obviously, the crazy loner hermit knows much more about human interaction than I do." 

Keith scowled, but didn't say anything. And it certainly wasn't because he had no decent argument against her. Pidge snorted and returned to her work. 

It took him a moment to shake his annoyance, but when he did, he felt bad for snapping. Pidge was obviously just cracking jokes like she always did. He was the one who was suddenly taking it personally and jumping down people's throats. 

"Sorry, Pidge," he scrubbed a hand down his face, "just a long day. Didn't mean to take it out on you." She accepted the apology with a nod, and Keith knew all was forgiven. Pidge didn't hold on to that stuff.

"So," Pidge changed the topic before the quiet could sour into an awkward silence, "you coming to the party tonight?" 

Keith resisted the urge to laugh. Despite Lance's ineptitude, they had won the battle today and it had been decided that they should have a party to celebrate. The cause was probably some mix of Allura's desire to keep them all buoyed and motivated, Shiro's desire to give them all a break, Lance's constant desire to be the center of attention, and Hunk's desire to cook a meal that they all attended at the same time. 

Keith had absolutely no plans to be there. He wasn't a guy who attended parties even before he had been thrown out of the garrison and moved into a shack in the desert. 

"Not a chance, Pidge, I have plans tonight," he answered. She rolled her eyes, "Your usual training in the simulator doesn't exactly count as having plans, Keith. We live in close proximity, I know you don't have something exciting going on."

"I could have plans," The argument was instinctive, defensive, and completely wrong. They were hurtling through space in an Altean castle with only each other for company. There were no plans to be had. 

She just gave him a pitying look, "So we've established that you don't have plans..." Keith groaned, "I'm not going to the party, Pidge." 

"That's fine, that's fine. I get it, you're still avoiding Lance after your-"

"I am not avoiding Lance!"

"So you're avoiding Lance, it's fine. If you're too scared to show your face at the party, I understand."

"I am not scared."

"Hey, don't worry about it. I mean Shiro will be disappointed that you're not there and Lance will be all triumphant because he thinks he beat you, but don't worry about it."

Keith knew he was being baited, he knew it. And yet, he felt himself slipping into those familiar behaviors nonetheless. 

"Lance couldn't beat me at anything if he tried." 

It was a stock answer, little real venom behind it. Shiro being disappointed, though, that was a real threat. Damn, Pidge was good at this. Between her manipulative skill and tech knowledge, she could easily take over the world. Keith was really hoping to be on her good side when it happened. 

There was a brief stare down. Unsurprisingly, and not for the first time, Keith caved first. 

"Fine!" He threw his hands up in resignation, "Fine, I will go to this ridiculous party. But just so you know, even a hermit like me knows that it's not really a party when you only have seven people." 

Pidge offered a sardonic smile, almost sad, "Seven's all we got."


End file.
